Leave
by Yvearia
Summary: Epilogue to 'Steadier Footing'.  Short one-shot. Spencer/Lou.


A/N: When I originally posted **SF** I did not intend to post a follow-up piece. However, after hearing from some of you and thinking a bit more about it, I came up with a way I could post one last piece about Spencer and Lou. This was actually a short story that I had an idea for prior to writing **SF**. It evolved into the short piece that proceeds the years chronicled by _Criminal Minds_. This is the polished epilogue to that piece. I hope you will all enjoy.

~Yve

* * *

_Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. – Aldous Huxley_

Spencer stood outside the BAU next to his car. He starred up at the night sky and the Blood Moon. It was massive and lit the sky with an eerily red glow. Also called the 'Hunter's Moon', the second full moon after the Autumn Equinox was said to help hunters track their prey. Appropriate that they had closed their latest case tonight.

His head ached and he couldn't decide whether it was a lack of caffeine, a lack of sleep, or the frustrations that had been plaguing the BAU team throughout the case. Probably a combination of all of the above. He ran his hands over his face, trailing his fingers through his already mussed hair, before locating his keys and unlocking his car.

The sound of heels clicking on the pavement behind him made him turn to see Garcia heading towards her car on the other end of the parking lot. this was Quantico, but you could never be too careful. He jogged to catch up to her and walk with her the rest of the distance.

"Garcia," he called so as not to startle her.

"My boy wonder!" she called, holding her arm out to him. "Keeping me company?"

"I thought you'd like that more than walking all this way alone." He smiled sheepishly, remembering how skittish he had become after his abduction. But Garcia had truly taken her shooting in stride - grateful for her survival and determined not to let the experience change her life for the worse. Maybe it was her volunteer counseling experience that had allowed her to have that kind of outlook on things.

"Well thank you, my most handsome escort. And, what do you have planned for this extra-long weekend we have coming to us?" Hotch and Rossi would be out of town on Monday and Tuesday speaking at a conference, so the rest of the team had been granted a three-day reprieve to recuperate – baring any major disasters.

"Um. Sleep – if I can manage it." He tried to sound hopeful but in truth he was incredibly drained.

"Well, do your best. A well-rested Dr. Reid is a happy Dr. Reid." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on his cheek. "Thanks for walking a girl to her car."

He wished her a good weekend and retreated to his car. The clock on his dash glowed 1 A.M. and he let out a long sigh while he waited for his engine to warm up before pulling out of the parking lot. He followed Garcia's car for a few stoplights before she turned right and he continued going straight for a few blocks.

He could barely remember the last few moments of driving before he realized he was parked in his parking space outside his building. He gathered his things from the seat next to him and opened the car door, prepared to trudge up the four flights of stairs to his apartment. The elevators were typically not operating after midnight and he was frequently forced to use the stairs. As he walked into the building he noticed a young woman standing with her back to him, waiting on an elevator car.

"You'll have to take the stairs," he offered nonchalantly as he passed the door to the elevator vestibule on his way to the stairs.

"Spencer?"

He stopped dead in his tracks just a few feet from the stairwell. That was a voice he hadn't heard in over seven years. His eyes snapped shut as he turned around to face her. He was willing himself to be mistaken. But when his eyes opened they settled on her face and there was no question.

"Lou!"

She sprinted toward him and threw her arms around his neck. "Oh, my God! Spencer… I… I'm so glad you're here. I wanted to call but I was afraid you wouldn't want to talk to me. Say something!"

Her smile was so wide and bright, and the concrete room made the air seem colder, even out of the wind. He didn't know what to say. 'It's been a while.' 'You're supposed to be dead.' 'Are you even real?'

"Why are you here?" he managed to croak out.

"Because of you. Because I saw you on a video of the University of Virginia's Criminology conference on YouTube."

"Let's go upstairs."

….

"What happened between you and Josh?" Spencer brought a French Press filled with fresh coffee out of the kitchen and set it on his coffee table, retreating once again to retrieve cups.

"You've moved up in the world, Dr. Reid." Lou was walking around his living room, looking at his collection of books, old and new, and touching surfaces here and there. "I've never been here before, still it feels so familiar. Bigger than your apartment at CalTech, though, that's for sure."

Spencer hovered by the couch, holding a mug in each hand and watching the woman from is past scrutinize his present. She really hadn't changed much at all. Long blonde hair, large dark framed glasses, but her mannerisms were distant, as though she wasn't used to interacting with other people. She stood straighter, more vigilant, and dressed more professionally, though with a semi ruffled quality. She wore dark grey trousers with a threadbare cream-colored sweater; he could see the lace of her bra peaking through here and there. Suddenly he realized he was staring.

"Do you want coffee?"

"Please."

"Sugar?"

"Yes, thank you."

"How much sugar?" he asked. He had remembered her taking only a little cream in her coffee.

"What looks good to you," she answered. It took him a second to realize she was talking about the sugar.

"And cream, right?" he stammered as he walked to the kitchen to retrieve it.

"No."

He shook his head quizzically and began fixing their coffees. "Are you still doing photography?" he asked, before realizing she hadn't answered his first question.

"You might say that. Diane Arbus once said that 'a photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know'. What do you think?"

"I don't know the first thing about photography." He walked across the room and handed her coffee cup to her. Her face lit slightly as she took the cup in her hand. It was chipped and the glaze was faded, but it had been the same cup she'd used every time she had visited Spencer at his apartment in the past.

"I remember this!" She smiled up at him impishly. "So, what do you know?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what do you do now? I know you work for the FBI. How did that happen?" she asked as she strode back across the living room to perch in the corner of Spencer's sofa. He noticed her feet were bare, but he couldn't remember her taking her shoes off. He dismissed the thought and sighed heavily. It wasn't exactly something he was comfortable talking to her about, especially since she had failed to acknowledge everything that had happened those last few days they spent together.

"There was a recruitment seminar. Uh… the speaker… was entertaining." Her smile broadened almost knowingly. "So what I do…" he continued, "is… a form of behavioral science… it's the BAU, the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI… I'm a profiler."

"Like that show that was on NBC in the 90's – _The Profiler_. You're like Samantha Waters," she teased.

"The show was actually filled with largely dramatized and fictionalized events, more glamorous and theatrical than anything we deal with on a daily basis. I actually think I do a lot more paperwork and research in dank back offices of old police stations than the fictional Dr. Waters ever did." That elicited a laugh from Lou, short and light, and it made Spencer smile in spite of himself.

"So what do you actually do as a profiler?"

"Profiling is a behavioral and investigative tool that is intended to help investigators to profile unknown criminal subjects or offenders. Holmes and Holmes outline the three main goals of criminal profiling: first to provide law enforcement with a social and psychological assessment of the offender; second to provide law enforcement with a psychological evaluation of belongings found in the possession of the offender; third to give suggestions and strategies for the interviewing process. Various aspects of a criminal's personality makeup are determined from his or her choices before, during, and after the crime. This information is combined with other relevant details and physical evidence, and then compared with the characteristics of known personality types and mental abnormalities to develop a practical working description of the offender…" he trailed of, realizing he had begun to ramble over definitions and descriptions yet again.

"I can see how you would fit in there. Very detail and fact based job, I assume?"

"Yes, but there's actually a lot of intuition involved."

"You were always very in tune," she nodded as she sat her mug down on the coffee table.

Spencer realized he was pacing and took a seat on the couch next to her. He glanced at his own half-empty cup before seeing that hers was still nearly full. "Is there something wrong with your coffee?"

"No. How's your mom, Spencer? Do you see her enough?"

"I still write her a letter every day." He decided it was his turn to change the subject. "Where have you been, Lou? You disappeared. I thought…"

"I know. We were in bed together in the morning, and then we didn't see each other for seven years. I can't tell you why I left when I did. All I can say is I'm sorry." She slipped off of the couch and knelt on the floor in front of him, taking his hands into her smaller ones.

"What did I do wrong? What… You disappeared… and you don't have _any_… explanation?"

"No. I'm sorry, I don't… Not one that's good enough. If I could go back to that morning, and just stay under the covers until you got home…" She shifted back up to the couch and slipped onto his lap – she weighed almost nothing – and ran her hands through his hair. "So short."

Spencer felt that tug in his chest that he had begun to think would be nothing more than a memory, as seldom as he interacted with women on a romantic level. His breathing deepened and his pulse quickened. "You haven't changed."

She smiled sadly up at him before shifting back to her seat in the corner of the couch. "Tell me about your friends."

He gave her a brief rundown of the team – current and former members alike. He knew he had missed the company of JJ and Gideon the most, but only now did he realize the strength of the bonds that had formed among the members of the BAU team. Each person had and held their place with dignity and respect, but beyond that, every member had become a part of a family.

"You've really changed, Spencer. You seem older."

"It's been seven years, Lou."

"Yeah. But you've really experienced things. I can see it," she said as she began circling the living room, slowly, turning in a sort of lazy pirouette as she did.

"Not all of it's been good," he shuddered. Thinking of the nights he spent drifting in and out of lucidity, and the days he spent craving, made him ache to his very core. He tried to avoid it as much as possible.

"But some of it has been good. You remember those times too."

Images flooded Spencer's mind – Saving Elle and the other passengers on the train in Texas, holding Lila Archer in his arms even as he warred with his own conscience, reconnecting with his father, the first time he shot up on his own, finally earning his one year chip, holding Henry in his arms for the first time, the anthrax, the letter from Gideon, the gunshot wound to his leg and the agonizing months that had followed, each victim who had died needlessly, and each one he had been able to help save, all of the times he had felt like a failure only to be lifted up again by the faith of his friends and the confidence they had in what he was capable of. It was a little like what he had imagined when people described their life flashing before their eyes, but somehow different.

He opened his eyes expecting to have woken from a dream, but he was still in his living room, seated, watching Lou glide across the floor to a tune he was incapable of hearing. "Tell me you'll still be hear when I wake up in the morning," he pleaded.

"I can't do that," she whispered.

"You disappeared… in January of 2003. Where did you go?"

"Berkley." She stopped moving a few feet in front of him, focused now. He knew she would answer his questions this time.

"With Josh?" She nodded. "Did you ever leave him?" He heard his voice crack. He was asking these questions of her as if he was asking them of the dead. She shook her head in answer. He swallowed hard before continuing. "Joshua Callahan is spending the rest of his life in a California prison for murdering Jennifer Lauren Rochford." He couldn't think of anything else even remotely logical to say.

"Spencer, you got to live the last seven years of your life. You got to experience things that, good or bad, made you the person you are. Please, don't ever forget that."

"Are you leaving?"

She nodded.

"Am I crazy?"

"No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness."

He closed his eyes, too overwhelmed by the implications of the entire evening, and when he opened them again, it was an empty room that greeted him.

It took him a few seconds to notice his cell phone vibrating on the coffee table where he had set it down hours ago.

"Garcia?"

"Hey, Dr. Fabulous. I need a favor."

He was quite for a second, wondering what she could possibly need from him in the middle of the night.

"Reid?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you come pick me up? I have a flat tire and Kevin's not answering his phone, the lazy loafer. He's probably WOW-ing…"

"God, Garcia. How long have you been sitting there?" He jumped up and grabbed his keys, heading for the door.

"Just five minutes. Have you made it home yet?"

Finally able to think clearly for a moment, he glanced at his watch. One twenty-eight A.M.

"I'm headed to my car. Where are you?

….

_It's gotten late and now I want to be alone.  
All of our friends were here; they all have gone home.  
And here I sit on the front porch  
Watching the drunks stumble forth into the night.  
You gave me a heart attack; I did not see you there.  
I thought you had disappeared so early away from here.  
And this is the chance I never got  
To make a move, but we just talk about  
The people we have met in the last five years  
And will we remember them in ten more.  
I let you bum a smoke, you quit this winter past.  
I've tried twice before but like this, it just would not last._

_Steadier Footing by Death Cab For Cutie_


End file.
